The 7 Most Random Celebrity Duos Who Hung Out Before Fame

Fame makes for a lot of strange bedfellows. Some would prefer you to remember their connections, like Peter Scolari with Tom Hanks. Others would rather you didn't bring it up, like Tom Hanks with Peter Scolari. And there are still others who started out together that you would've never even thought of. Like ...

But before Romero was filming people shambling around his neighborhood in death metal makeup, he tried making a living working on commercials and short films. One of his earliest jobs was shooting a television segment for a Presbyterian minister named Fred Rogers. You probably know him only as "Mister" Rogers.

We're not sure about Fred, but at the very least, the king wants to eat your brains.

That's right -- Romero, one of the godfathers of splatterhouse cinema, got his start filming bits for Mister Rogers' Neighborhood on PBS. In fact, it was a segment that featured Mister Rogers getting a tonsillectomy that reportedly inspired Romero to go into the horror movie business, though he probably found it hard to top showing a graphic surgical procedure on a show targeted to toddlers.

Rogers was incredibly supportive of Romero, but that support did stop short of letting him use Betty Aberlin (who played Lady Aberlin on Mister Rogers Neighborhood). Romero wanted her to play the role of Judy in Night of The Living Dead, a character whose primary purpose was to explode and be eaten. Mister Rogers said no.

"No, you're right Fred. The zombie thing is probably a passing fad."

Not that Mister Rogers had a problem with Romero's zombie movies. He went to screenings of both Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, and after viewing the latter, he told Romero, "It's a lot of fun, George." Which is fitting, because if Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and Night of the Living Dead have taught us anything, it's that it's what's on the inside that counts.

As seen above.

#6. Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore

Academy Award winner Tommy Lee Jones began his Harvard education in 1965 on a scholarship, and as the custom for freshmen goes, he was tossed into campus housing with a randomly selected roommate. As any of us who have been to college knows, if you're lucky, you get somebody you can at least tolerate for nine months.

"Tolerate" is a word that here means "draw penises on."

Tommy Lee Jones was fortunate enough to get along so well with his freshman roommate that they requested to room together for the next three years. His roommate? None other than the inventor of the Internet himself, Al fucking Gore.

Al fucking Gore.

The two did just about everything together, from playing pool and shooting tin cans to traipsing through the Tennessee wilderness hunting, canoeing, and chasing cows and raccoons in the woods at night to wrapping a turkey in tin foil and cooking it in their dorm room. Presumably their friendship was one of the primary influences behind The Dukes of Hazzard.

Also, they watched Star Trek. This is not a joke. This actually happened.

As if they could sense their exploits would eventually become both ironic and hilarious, they toured bars as country music singers trying to pick up women. The opening act featured Gore performing stand-up comedy, which given Gore's public speaking style was probably every bit as witty and topical as a Hungry Man dinner.

The two remain close friends to this day, presumably having many heated debates over whether an Academy Award or a Nobel Prize will get you laid more.

We hear the bars in Oslo are filled with Nobel Sluts.

#5. Jon Stewart and Congressman Anthony Weiner

With New York City's dense population, you'd expect there to be some overlap as people are getting their start, sharing surprisingly nice apartments on their meager incomes.

Sort of like when Friends shared their apartment with Paul Rudd.

One of those people was Jon Stewart, who got an apartment with a woman who was the girlfriend of the unfortunately named future congressman Anthony Weiner. Weiner then was just a middle-class kid from the Bronx living off his girlfriend and mom while waiting for his bachelor of arts degree to pay off. Stewart likely endured him eating all the Raisin Bran and leaving his shit all over the apartment.

Basically, he was being a Weiner.

While there are admittedly few publicly known anecdotes about their past together, it is interesting to note how both Weiner and Stewart wound up in the political sphere. Keep in mind, these two didn't meet in the "aspiring political figure" club in college. Stewart was an actor/comedian who would go on to have a brief stint on MTV followed by years of character roles in various movies.

It was during this time that he was stabbed in the eye with a pen in The Faculty.

He took over as host of The Daily Show in 1999 -- a show that at the time had absolutely nothing to do with politics -- which is the same year Weiner began representing New York's 9th District in Congress. Since then, Stewart has arguably become one of the most influential political commentators, and Weiner's popularity has grown enough to get him elected to six consecutive terms.

#4. Lee Corso and Burt Reynolds

Lee Corso, the former football coach who dons mascot heads every Saturday for ESPN's College GameDay, wasn't always the goofy bastard doing color commentary. Back in college, he was a goofy bastard playing football for Florida State University with his roommate Burt Reynolds.

Corso said: "One was gorgeous, the other one was ugly. He always took the beautiful girl, gave me the ugly one. But you know what I found out early? Burt Reynolds' ugly girlfriends were better than anything I could get on my own."